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Netanyahu, Trump, and Jared Kushner. Photo credit: The White House.

 It is time that Israel faces that the present negotiations between Trump and Iran are getting nowhere.  Trump’s approach has been to set a deadline, declare that if Iran does not meet it, there will be dire  consequences, and if Iran does not meet it, extend the deadline. By now Iran must have concluded that it must not treat  Trump’s threats seriously.  Something has to change and Israel has to change it.

After reaching this conclusion, I realized that since I had decades of participating in mediations in the United States, perhaps I could think of a way to resolve this controversy. Below is my suggestion.

I begin in 2008, when  Obama was elected President. As Obama admits in his second biography, when he and Netanyahu first discussed the threat to Israel’s peace, they talked about negotiations with Iran and talks with the Palestinian Authority.  The two men had different views about Iran, though they agreed that Iran should never be allowed to have nuclear weapons.  When they spoke about peace with Palestinians, on which Obama wanted to focus, Netanyahu remained noncommittal.

For the next eight years, because of their differences, the relationship between the two men was confrontational. Netanyahu’s position was  that because the Palestinian Authority (PA) had 0 missiles and Iran, together with its proxies, had roughly 150,000 missile ready to be shot at Israel, he  was not concerned with peace negotiations which did not include Iran, while Obama continued the believe that key to peace for Israel was peace between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

For eight years, the two men treated each other as adversaries. Still,  Netanyahu tried to stand up to  Obama without destroying Israel’s good relations with United States.  For the most part, he succeeded. but the relationship between Obama and Netanyahu  was awful.

In 2016, Donald Trump was elected. From Netanyahu’s point of view  that must have seemed like a breath of fresh air.  He and Trump, had  been friends for years . When Trump became President, his old friend Bibi was  Israel’s Prime Minister. Netanyahu, apparently aware that Trump rewarded his friends, made sure that they remained friends. By dealing with Trump that way, Netanyahu got Trump to do a number of things for Israel, including moving the American Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and recognizing that the Golan was part of Israel.

Most importantly,  just a few days before Trump announced his decision to withdraw from  the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action ( JCPOA), a plan that was supposed to delay Iran’s ability to make nuclear weapons, Netanyahu delivered a televised “Iran Lied” presentation. He disclosed  that the Mossad had obtained access to a warehouse where Iran kept records which showed its past nuclear activity. The  result was that The Mossad obtained 55,000 pages and 55,000 digital files describing Iran’s nuclear activities and brought them back to Israel. Those documents showed conclusively that Iran had been lying when it had said that it had NOT been violating the restrictions on it imposed by the  JCPOA. In his speech announcing that the United States was withdrawing from the JCPOA, Trump stated that the documents the Mossad uncovered  proved “conclusively” that Iran had misrepresented that it was complying with the JCPOA.

That is NOT how friends talk about friends.  It is time for Israel to reciprocate.   It is time for Israel to get tough.

Last week, I read three scary articles. The first  one is  from the Jerusalem Post. Relying on an article published in the New York Times,  it explains that Iran has recovered 70% of the missile strength that it had before the present conflict took place.  https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/iran-news/article-895973

The third article comes from the Times of Israel.  It quotes  Hezbollah’s Secretary General Naim Qassam as saying,  “No one outside Lebanon has any say in the weapons, the resistance, or  the organization of Lebanon’s internal affairs. This is an internal Lebanese matter and not part of negotiations with the enemy.” https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/hezbollah-leader-says-terror-groups-weapons-not-a-subject-of-israel-lebanon-talks-we-will-not-surrender/

Iran’s response to these comments were made by  Ali Nikzad, the Deputy Speaker of Iran’s Parliament.  During an interview on  Lebanon’s Al-Nabar TV, Nikzad described the relationship between  Hezbollah and Iran stating:  “Hezbollah is the soul of Iran and Iran is the soul of Hezbollah.” 

This does not bode well for Israel. If the present negotiations continue as  they are, Israel will have gone to war for nothing. The only way that can be avoided is if Israel shows some backbone, agrees to play the evil party in  the negotiations and  lets Trump seem like the  more reasonable one. Israel must tell Trump that he can no longer speak for it  in the negotiations, of which Israel must be a part, and  that Israel  must  be a signatory to the final document signed by the parties.

Israel must also make clear that when it makes a threat, it will follow through with it. Iran will believe that.  If does not, Israel must follow through on the threat.

When it imposes its deadline. Israel  should also submit a settlement offer which incudes the following provisions:

1. The Straights of Hormuz must  be made open  and Iran must agree never to close them again.

2. Iran must agree to cease its its activity to make a nuclear weapon and divest itself of all its enriched Uranium,

3. The United States must rescind all of its sanctions against Iran, thereby allowing Iran to  receive Billions dollars, but none of that money can be used for military purposes or to fund any terrorist organization, including Hezbollah, the Houthis, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Hamas.

4. Any agreement must  prohibit any missiles, drones or  other weapons of any sort  from being transferred directly or indirectly by Iran to any of the countries or organizations listed above.   

5.  Iran must agree to inspections in order to verify that it is in compliance with the terms of the agreement.

Such an approach will show that Israel has backbone and should , thereby, break open the logjam created by the present negotiations. The alternative is unthinkable for everyone.

Before making Aliyah from the United States, I spent over three decades as a lawyer in the United States. My practice involved handling many civil rights cases, including women’s- rights cases, in State and Federal courts. I handled numerous constitutional cases for the ACLU and argued one civil rights case in the United States Supreme Court. I chaired the Colorado Supreme Court’s Committee on the Rules of Criminal Procedure and served on the Colorado Supreme Court’s Civil Rules and Rules of Evidence Committees. Since much of my practice involved the public interest, I became interested in environmental law and worked closely with environmental organizations, including the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF). I was on the Rocky Mountain Board of EDF. I received an award from the Nebraska Sierra Club as a result of winning a huge environmental case that was referred to me by EDF. I also developed significant knowledge of hazardous and radioactive waste disposal. I was involved in a number of law suits concerning waste disposal, including a highly-political one in the United States Supreme Court which involved the disposal of nuclear waste.

As I child I was told by my mother, a German, Jewish refugee who fled Nazi Germany, that Israel was a place for her and her child. When I first visited Israel many years later, I understood what she meant. My feeling of belonging in Israel caused me to make Aliyah and Israel my home.
Though I am retired now, I have continued my interest in activism and the world in which I find myself.